State and business faulted on immigrant response

The Government is not doing enough to integrate non-Irish nationals into society and the Department of Enterprise in particular should be doing more to ensure immigrant workers know their rights, the chairwoman of the steering committee overseeing the Government's anti-racism programme has said.

Lucy Gaffney was also critical of the business community for not doing enough to help non-Irish employees integrate.

Ms Gaffney, chairwoman of the steering committee of the National Action Plan Against Racism, was speaking to The Irish Times in advance of Intercultural Week, which begins this weekend.

Ms Gaffney said the Department of Enterprise was excellent in ensuring Irish emigrants were equipped with information before leaving, but "should be doing more to make migrant workers coming in aware of their rights".

She was disappointed at the turnout for a recent corporate breakfast, which was addressed by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, to encourage business leaders to "embrace cultural diversity in the workplace".

"We sent out about 600 invitations and about 100 came along. Now the 100 were great, but not enough turned out," she said. "To be honest, corporate Ireland as a whole is not doing enough. Everyone now has a diverse workforce and business managers need to be doing things like ensuring their training is in different languages.

"Simple things like having social events so that all employees can get to meet each other informally - things like that just help people integrate."

Businesses such as Google and Dell were "fantastic" and Ibec was "fully committed" to embracing multi-culturalism, but many businesses needed to do more to make their immigrant staff feel welcome.

She would like to see more being done to ensure immigrants "get involved in the politics" and has written to each of the political parties "to see what they are doing to ensure ethnic minorities are getting in the picture".

It was hugely important, she said, that society was pro-active in ensuring the integration of non-Irish nationals if serious problems of ghettoisation and alienation were to be avoided in the future.

"In the 12 months to April 2005 we had the highest levels of immigration since records on migration began here in 1987. There were 70,000 immigrants in those 12 months. Foreign nationals now make up 6 per cent of the population and by 2030 our foreign population could be one million, or 18 per cent of the population."

Overall, however, she is positive about how Ireland is coping with record immigration, and says she does not believe the Irish are as racist as is often implied.

"We give ourselves an awful hard time. When you hear 'racist' comments about immigrants I wonder is it really racism or is it just fear or unfamiliarity.

"When you look at the huge community support for people threatened with deportation, my God I'm so proud. And when you hear about the 'racist' exploitation of immigrant workers, I don't believe that is racism. That's greed. Those employers would exploit and underpay Irish people if they thought they could get away with it."

The key was ensuring immigrants knew their rights and entitlements and were not afraid to seek them. It was necessary to "demystify" the whole issue of race, immigration and "foreignness".

"It's not a big deal," she said several times. "That's the message we want to get across. It's around us, it's there, it's the way it is and it's not a big deal."

The group that she feels suffers the worst racism in Ireland is Travellers. "I do suspect Irish people are more sympathetic to non-Irish nationals than they are to Travellers. Travellers get a raw deal. A lot of work has been done but it's difficult because the disrespect is for a lifestyle."

Though Government needs to do more in addressing the challenges of immigration, she praises it for adopting the National Action Plan Against Racism, adding her committee had "the most phenomenal support" from Mr McDowell. "The action plan is used as a model in other countries."

Intercultural week runs from March 19th to 26th. Details available from www.diversity.ie